Thanks Shawn, I'm going to give the temporary table idea a try. I did omit the 'category' table while testing but when I used EXPLAIN the # of rows for the thread_link join increased from 105 to 16326 so I decided to leave the category table in. But I agree, it isn't needed.
My other idea I had was to store the number of 'thread_posts' for a thread inside the thread table itself. Obviously this wouldn't be normalized and would have to be maintained or updated frequently to be accurate... It might be a last resort if the temp table doesn't work out. ... But I like to play by normalization rules as much as possible. Thanks again, I'll post any performance improvements. - John -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
